Like I wrote in an earlier post after hearing Elyse Graham, the author of Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II interviewed on On the Media I knew I had to read her book. Anything that combines books, libraries and World War II-era espionage sounds too good to pass up. So last July when Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle edition I snapped one up. Last week I went to work reading it and found Graham’s quick-paced book entertaining and enlightening.

One wouldn’t know it today but when the United States entered World War II it was a nation without a spy agency. While the Army and Navy possessed intelligence divisions and the State Department undoubtedly had a few personnel here and there with their ears to the ground there was no centralized agency staffed by professionals dedicated to gathering and analyzing intelligence, let alone countering the machinations of foreign spies. If the United States was to defeat the Axis powers it needed to create a new spy agency virtually overnight.

Seeking experts in an array of fields including physics, history, geography and foreign languages agents of the newly-formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS) fanned out among America’s universities and libraries enlisting professors, librarians and scientists. A wartime America needed these subject matter experts who were well trained to read mountains of material quickly, ascertain its worthiness, synthesize and report their findings. But perhaps above all they had an uncanny knack for knowing what information was needed and how to get it.

One of my favorite scholars to answer the call was library archivists Adele Kibre. Sent to Stockholm in neutral Sweden she acquired hard to get documents ranging from German scientific papers to Norwegian underground newspapers. Brilliant and multilingual, the daughter of movie set designers procured needed materials while charming various officials in her mid-American Hollywood movie accent with tales of silver screen gossip. Like a skilled judo player able to use an opponent’s greater weight to her advantage she employed the sexism of her day by making purposely incorrect statements only to let the man correct her with the correct, and sought-after information.

Another was Joseph Curtiss, a fledgling literature professor from Yale.  Anxious to make tenure he instead accepted the OSS’s employment offer and was sent to Istanbul. Upon arrival he assumed the persona of an academic sent abroad to acquire rare books. Unfortunately, around the time his American handler was recalled to the US for incompetence. (Legend has it whenever Curtiss’s bumbling superior walked into his favorite Istanbul nightclub the house band would strike up the song “I’m a spy.”) Curtiss, now alone and without orders nevertheless went about his mission undeterred filling his flat with towers of rare books procured from the shops and bazaars and Istanbul. He would later be instrumental in recruiting double agents and gathering priceless intelligence.

In hindsight ,America’s wartime decision to create the OSS was a monumental one. After World War II’s conclusion the OSS would give birth to today’s CIA, the world’s (at least for now) premier spy agency. Military victories made possible thanks to helpful information gleaned from phone books, dusty old maps and railroad timetables showed the vital usefulness of open source intelligence, and every spy agency since then has valued it seriously. Lastly, this close working relation between higher education and the OSS would help reshape colleges and universities across America as they added Area Studies specializing in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and East Asia.

For espionage aficionados and World War II buffs alike Book and Dagger is a fun read. Don’t be surprised come December if it makes my list of Favorite Nonfiction.